French president Nicolas Sarkozy has suggested that in honour of the 50th anniversary of the death of Albert Camus, the Algerian born author’s remains should be moved into the Panthéon where the heroes of France are traditionally buried. But left wing academics and intellectuals are a little piqued at the idea of the right wing president co-opting one of their heroes.

While Sarkozy claims that this is a project close to his heart, the left are a little suspicious. According to a report in The Guardian, Camus biographer Oliver Todd told French radio that he doesn’t “think Albert Camus has any need of Sarkozy. I think Sarkozy has greater need of some intellectual sparkle.” Academic Jeanyves Guérin, siad “Sarkozy is the friend of [George W] Bush, [Muammar] Gaddafi, [Vladimir] Putin, [Silvio] Berlusconi. His politics are the antithesis of the values and ideas which Camus defended.”

Camus, most famous for his novel The Stranger and often associated with the existentialist movement received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature and is currently  buried in the cemetery of Lourmarin, the village in southern France to which he moved in 1958. He was killed in a car crash on January 4 1960 and is survived by his twin children Jean and Catherine who hold the copyright to his work and who would ultimately have to give permission for Sarkozy to transfer their father’s remains. At the moment  neither of the children seem to enthusiastic about the project and there are some commentators who feel that making such a fuss of a famously reclusive man is a bad idea.

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